Ran the winmkiso script as per the instructions, and it produced the first ISO image - eventually. It took about an hour! I have used jigdo in the past, and I don't remember it being that slow. I finally stopped the script when it had built the first image, and was then scanning all the help files on the DVD for some reason.

If you're on dialup, it'll save you an incalculable amount of time downloading -- eg X mins to build the ISOs rather than several days to download them.

I've just checked the winmkiso script here, and it took around 25 mins extra to scan the non-CentOS files (such as all the Help ones as you pointed out). Basically it shouldn't do that -- it should scan just the CentOS files, completing in about half the time.

So apologies for it being a bit slow -- I'll make sure it scans only the directories required in future. Hope you enjoy the discs anyway!

Think I can answer this one... if they just put the ISOs on the DVD, you wouldn't be able to install direct from the DVD without first burning a bunch of CDs.
I think it's fair to assume that a good proportion of people buying the DVD version have a DVD drive on their machine.
And yes, I know that many people try the distros on the DVD on older machines that only have a CD drive - Jigdo allows LXF to keep them happy(ish) as well.

The poor performance is a feature of Windows rather than Jigdo. The Linux mkiso script runs a lot faster. It may be possible for Mike to eke some more speed out of winmkiso. I know nothing about MSDOS batch scripts, so I stuck very closely to the original script that came with Jigdo. Mike, on the other hand, could go and pester someone in PC Plus for help. I don't think there's much to be gained though, Windows seems to be much slower at reading CDs, especially directory scans.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein)